16 Restaurant Dishes Made Healthy

Lightened Restaurant Dishes

We took classic restaurant dishes, kept the meal appeal, and cut the calories by a huge amount. Here are the ingredients and techniques that make that possible.

Deli sandwiches can get ridiculously big—some piled so high they're impossible to eat. You don't need sodium-heavy corned beef layered 3 inches high to get plenty of savory flavor. So we shrank the portion size to reap significant nutritional savings.

Creamy Lasagna

Lots of colorful, delicious baby veggies between pasta layers reduce the typical mounds of cheese. Red sauce often contains fatty meats like sausage, and standard white sauces rely on cream. Our white sauce is based on fat-free broth, and we add just a bit of cream and an egg to give it a silky texture. We boosted the amount of Parmigiano-Reggiano. Aged cheeses have rich, concentrated flavor, so you can get away with using less. We sprinkled the Parm within the layers to supplement the fontina that's used to give a crunchy-cheesy crust on top.

Cheesesteak

What hot dogs are to Coney Island and wings are to Buffalo, the cheesesteak is to Philadelphia: iconic, tasty, and loaded with salt and fat. But, thanks to our lightened version, you'll be able to enjoy this meaty, gooey, and delightfully messy, sandwich all year.

Eggplant Parmesan

Talk about a dish that could stand to lose a few: The Italian-American favorite of eggplant, tomato sauce, and cheese—spelled variously "Parmesan," "parmigian," or "parmigiana"—knows no nutritional boundaries. We've revamped this tasty casserole to help it lose the heaviness, not to mention the grease, of the old standard. You'll have room for dessert.

Gumbo

This is certainly not a soup to disrespect. To build all that great flavor with lower sodium, we began by making a quick homemade shrimp stock reduction, drawing lots of shrimp flavor from the shells. We slashed more sodium by ditching the sausage and instead using meaty chicken thighs for richness. The briny shrimp needed just a light dusting of smoked paprika to take the flavor to a whole new level—no extra salt required. Canola oil replaced saturated fat--heavy butter in the nicely darkened roux.

Crab Cakes

Our version of crab cakes is ideal for the season: a ­vibrant and light dish that pairs perfectly with a crisp salad and glass of wine. We lightly season sweet, premium crab and use just enough mayonnaise, low-sodium panko (Japanese breadcrumbs), and egg to bind it all together. We don’t add any salt to the mixture, to keep sodium in check. The cakes are cooked in a slick of oil instead of deep-fried. We love a good rémoulade but overhaul the condiment to add a flavor punch without as much sodium.

Chicken Fingers

Instead of batter-coated, deep-fried chicken drowning in fatty sauce, our chicken gets a crunchy exterior from cereal and is served with just enough spicy mayo for dipping. Use less hot chile sauce (or none at all) if serving to children.

Chicken Parm

Chicken Parm can become a real doorstop three ways: The chicken portions are too large, then breaded and deep-fried, then placed on a giant pillow of pasta. By splitting chicken breasts lengthwise, we maintain maximum surface area for lots of crispy coating satisfaction while using half the meat. Sayonara, though, to most of the high-calorie pasta: It now plays a supporting role. This recipe also shows that bypassing the deep fryer and minimizing the oil in the sauté pan can still give you crispy cutlets, with a lot less fuss.

Fried Chicken

We love fried chicken. But that bird won't fly in a half-cal/full-plate world. Instead, we begin with the rich flavor of thigh meat and use simple pan-fry techniques to achieve the savory satisfaction of fried chicken without the oil bath. Both the skin and the heavy breading are gone from the bird, as is the cream from the creamed corn (we use flour-thickened milk; it's really good). Our stewed greens contain no bacon fat (or even oil)—just tender greens in a bit of stock. This is no stingy imitation; it's a plate of chicken, corn, and greens that sticks to the ribs, lightly.

Fish Curries

Traditional fish curries of this type rely on fatty-fat coconut cream and coconut milk for thickness, richness, and creaminess. We love all that coconut goodness, but start instead with light coconut milk, reducing it down by about half: As the water evaporates, the flavor gets concentrated and the texture thickens up nicely. Rather than drown the fish in a pool of sauce, we drape our intense curry over the fish and cashew rice. This wise calorie cutting leaves room for a big handful of chewy, rich cashews. A pile of stir-fried veggies rounds out the meal.

Meat Loaf

Mushrooms replace half the beef in our meat loaf, where they not only slash calories but also add deep, earthy flavor while keeping the mix moist. Cauliflower stands in for much of the starchy potatoes in a delicious cauliflower mash. Even the peas and carrots side is lighter: Sugar snaps are a bit less caloric than starchier green peas.

Tomato Sauce Lasagna

Most vegetable-based lasagnas lean heavily on cream sauces. Go with tomato sauce instead, as we do here, and loads of fat and calories fall away. That rewards the cook with a large but light portion. We also use fewer noodles—only 2 layers—and add heft with earthy kale and mushrooms. The fresh orange side salad is lightly dressed and uses juicy oranges—not an oil slick—to keep the leaves moist.

Po'boy

This dramatic po'boy makeover results from two strategies: a reasonable portion approach and oven-frying. Our sandwich is a wonderfully messy handful, just nowhere near a foot-long monster that in a traditional recipe can deliver an entire day's worth of calories and more than a day's worth of fat. Calorie cutting begins with keeping the shrimp and baked pickle chips away from the deep fryer, yet there's still the required crunch and yum because high-heat baking crisps things up mighty fine. You get a heap of garlicky kale on the side.